taken place in her once vigorous frame. Turning restlessly, she drew
the bedclothes round her; my elbow, resting on a corner of the
quilt, fixed it down: she was at once irritated.
'Sit up!' said she; 'don't annoy me with holding the clothes
fast. Are you Jane Eyre?'
'I am Jane Eyre.'
'I have had more trouble with that child than any one would
believe. Such a burden to be left on my hands- and so much annoyance
as she caused me, daily and hourly, with her incomprehensible
disposition, and her sudden starts of temper, and her continual,
unnatural watchings of one's movements! I declare she talked to me
once like something mad, or like a fiend- no child ever spoke or
looked as she did; I was glad to get her away from the house. What did
they do with her at Lowood? The fever broke out there, and many of the
pupils died. She, however, did not die: but I said she did- I wish she
had died!'
'A strange wish, Mrs. Reed; why do you hate her so?'
'I had a dislike to her mother always; for she was my husband's
only sister, and a great favourite with him: he opposed the family's
disowning her when she made her low marriage; and when news came of
her death, he wept like a simpleton. He would send for the baby;
though I entreated him rather to put it out to nurse and pay for its
maintenance. I hated it the first time I set my eyes on it- a
sickly, whining, pining thing! It would wail in its cradle all night
long- not screaming heartily like any other child, but whimpering
and moaning. Reed pitied it; and he used to nurse it and notice it
as if it had been his own: more, indeed, than he ever noticed his
own at that age. He would try to make my children friendly to the
little beggar: the darlings could not bear it, and he was angry with
them when they showed their dislike. In his last illness, he had it
brought continually to his bedside; and but an hour before he died, he
bound me by vow to keep the creature. I would as soon have been
charged with a pauper brat out of a workhouse: but he was weak,
naturally weak. John does not at all resemble his father, and I am
glad of it: John is like me and like my brothers- he is quite a
Gibson. Oh, I wish he would cease tormenting me with letters for
money! I have no more money to give him: we are getting poor. I must
send away half the servants and shut up part of the house; or let it
off. I can never submit to do that- yet how are we to get on?
Two-thirds of my income goes in paying the interest of mortgages. John
gambles dreadfully, and always loses- poor boy! He is beset by
sharpers: John is sunk and degraded- his look is frightful- I feel
ashamed for him when I see him.'
She was getting much excited. 'I think I had better leave her now,'
said I to Bessie, who stood on the other side of the bed.
'Perhaps you had, Miss: but she often talks in this way towards
night- in the morning she is calmer.'
I rose. 'Stop!' exclaimed Mrs. Reed, 'there is another thing I
wished to say. He threatens me- he continually threatens me with his
own death, or mine: and I dream sometimes that I see him laid out with
a great wound in his throat, or with a swollen and blackened face. I
am come to a strange pass: I have heavy troubles. What is to be
done? How is the money to be had?'
Bessie now endeavoured to persuade her to take a sedative
draught: she succeeded with difficulty. Soon after, Mrs. Reed grew
more composed, and sank into a dozing state. I then left her.
More than ten days elapsed before I had again any conversation with
her. She continued either delirious or lethargic; and the doctor
forbade everything which could painfully excite her. Meantime, I got
on as well as I could with Georgiana and Eliza. They were very cold,
indeed, at first. Eliza would sit half the day sewing, reading, or
writing, and scarcely utter a word either to me or her sister.
Georgiana would chatter nonsense to her canary bird by the hour, and
take no notice of me. But I was determined not to seem at a loss for
occupation or amusement: I had brought my drawing materials with me,
and they served me for both.
Provided with a case of pencils, and some sheets of paper, I used
to take a seat apart from them, near the window, and busy myself in
sketching fancy vignettes, representing any scene that happened
momentarily to shape itself in the ever-shifting kaleidoscope of
imagination: a glimpse of sea between two rocks; the rising moon,
and a ship crossing its disk; a group of reeds and water-flags, and
a naiad's head, crowned with lotus-flowers, rising out of them; an elf
sitting in a hedge-sparrow's nest, under a wreath of hawthorn-bloom.
One morning I fell to sketching a face: what sort of a face it
was to be, I did not care or know. I took a soft black pencil, gave it
a broad point, and worked away. Soon I had traced on the paper a broad
and prominent forehead and a square lower outline of visage: that
contour gave me pleasure; my fingers proceeded actively to fill it
with features. Strongly-marked horizontal eyebrows must be traced
under that brow; then followed, naturally, a well-defined nose, with a
straight ridge and full nostrils; then a flexible-looking mouth, by no
means narrow; then a firm chin, with a decided cleft down the middle
of it: of course, some black whiskers were wanted, and some jetty
hair, tufted on the temples, and waved above the forehead. Now for the
eyes: I had left them to the last, because they required the most
careful working. I drew them large; I shaped them well: the
eyelashes I traced long and sombre; the irids lustrous and large.
'Good! but not quite the thing,' I thought, as I surveyed the
effect: 'they want more force and spirit'; and I wrought the shades
blacker, that the lights might flash more brilliantly- a happy touch
or two secured success. There, I had a friend's face under my gaze;
and what did it signify that those young ladies turned their backs
on me? I looked at it; I smiled at the speaking likeness: I was
absorbed and content.
'Is that a portrait of some one you know?' asked Eliza, who had
approached me unnoticed. I responded that it was merely a fancy
head, and hurried it beneath the other sheets. Of course, I lied: it
was, in fact, a very faithful representation of Mr. Rochester. But
what was that to her, or to any one but myself? Georgiana also
advanced to look. The other drawings pleased her much, but she
called that 'an ugly man.' They both seemed surprised at my skill. I
offered to sketch their portraits; and each, in turn, sat for a pencil
outline. Then Georgiana produced her album. I promised to contribute a
water-colour drawing: this put her at once into good humour. She
proposed a walk in the grounds. Before we had been out two hours, we
were deep in a confidential conversation: she had favoured me with a
description of the brilliant winter she had spent in London two
seasons ago- of the admiration she had there excited- the attention
she had received; and I even got hints of the titled conquest she
had made. In the course of the afternoon and evening these hints
were enlarged on: various soft conversations were reported, and
sentimental scenes represented; and, in short, a volume of a novel
of fashionable life was that day improvised by her for my benefit. The
communications were renewed from day to day: they always ran on the
same theme- herself, her loves, and woes. It was strange she never
once adverted either to her mother's illness, or her brother's
death, or the present gloomy state of the family prospects. Her mind
seemed wholly taken up with reminiscences of past gaiety, and
aspirations after dissipations to come. She passed about five
minutes each day in her mother's sick-room, and no more.
Eliza still spoke little: she had evidently no time to talk. I
never saw a busier person than she seemed to be; yet it was
difficult to say what she did: or rather, to discover any result of
her diligence. She had an alarm to call her up early. I know not how
she occupied herself before breakfast, but after that meal she divided
her time into regular portions, and each hour had its allotted task.
Three times a day she studied a little book, which I found, on
inspection, was a Common Prayer Book. I asked her once what was the
great attraction of that volume, and she said, 'the Rubric.' Three
hours she gave to stitching, with gold thread, the border of a
square crimson cloth, almost large enough for a carpet. In answer to
my inquiries after the use of this article, she informed me it was a
covering for the altar of a new church lately erected near
Gateshead. Two hours she devoted to her diary; two to working by
herself in the kitchen-garden; and one to the regulation of her
accounts. She seemed to want no company; no conversation. I believe
she was happy in her way: this routine sufficed for her; and nothing
annoyed her so much as the occurrence of any incident which forced her
to vary its clockwork regularity.
She told me one evening, when more disposed to be communicative
than usual, that John's conduct, and the threatened ruin of the
family, had been a source of profound affliction to her: but she had
now, she said, settled her mind, and formed her resolution. Her own
fortune she had taken care to secure; and when her mother died- and it
was wholly improbable, she tranquilly remarked, that she should either
recover or linger long- she would execute a long-cherished project:
seek a retirement where punctual habits would be permanently secured
from disturbance, and place safe barriers between herself and a
frivolous world. I asked if Georgiana would accompany her.
'Of course not. Georgiana and she had nothing in common: they never
had had. She would not be burdened with her society for any
consideration. Georgiana should take her own course; and she, Eliza,
would take hers.'
Georgiana, when not unburdening her heart to me, spent most of
her time in lying on the sofa, fretting about the dulness of the
house, and wishing over and over again that her aunt Gibson would send
her an invitation up to town. 'It would be so much better,' she
said, 'if she could only get out of the way for a month or two, till
all was over.' I did not ask what she meant by 'all being over,' but I
suppose she referred to the expected decease of her mother and the
gloomy sequel of funeral rites. Eliza generally took no more notice of
her sister's indolence and complaints than if no such murmuring,
lounging object had been before her. One day, however, as she put away
her account-book and unfolded her embroidery, she suddenly took her up
thus-
'Georgiana, a more vain and absurd animal than you was certainly
never allowed to cumber the earth. You had no right to be born, for
you make no use of life. Instead of living for, in, and with yourself,
as a reasonable being ought, you seek only to fasten your feebleness
on some other person's strength: if no one can be found willing to
burden her or himself with such a fat, weak, puffy, useless thing, you
cry out that you are ill-treated, neglected, miserable. Then, too,
existence for you must be a scene of continual change and
excitement, or else the world is a dungeon: you must be admired, you
must be courted, you must be flattered- you must have music,
dancing, and society- or you languish, you die away. Have you no sense
to devise a system which will make you independent of all efforts, and
all wills, but your own? Take one day; share it into sections; to each
section apportion its task: leave no stray unemployed quarters of an
hour, ten minutes, five minutes- include all; do each piece of
business in its turn with method, with rigid regularity. The day
will close almost before you are aware it has begun; and you are
indebted to no one for helping you to get rid of one vacant moment:
you have had to seek no one's company, conversation, sympathy
forbearance; you have lived, in short, as an independent being ought
to do. Take this advice: the first and last I shall offer you; then
you will not want me or any one else, happen what may. Neglect it-
go on as heretofore, craving, whining, and idling- and suffer the
results of your idiocy, however bad and insufferable they may be. I
tell you this plainly; and listen: for though I shall no more repeat
what I am now about to say, I shall steadily act on it. After my
mother's death, I wash my hands of you: from the day her coffin is
carried to the vault in Gateshead Church, you and I will be as
separate as if we had never known each other. You need not think
that because we chanced to be born of the same parents, I shall suffer
you to fasten me down by even the feeblest claim: I can tell you this-
if the whole human race, ourselves excepted, were swept away, and we
two stood alone on the earth, I would leave you in the old world,
and betake myself to the new.'
She closed her lips.
'You might have spared yourself the trouble of delivering that
tirade,' answered Georgiana. 'Everybody knows you are the most
selfish, heartless creature in existence: and I know your spiteful
hatred towards me: I have had a specimen of it before in the trick you
played me about Lord Edwin Vere: you could not bear me to be raised
above you, to have a title, to be received into circles where you dare
not show your face, and so you acted the spy and informer, and
ruined my prospects for ever.' Georgiana took out her handkerchief and
blew her nose for an hour afterwards; Eliza sat cold, impassible,
and assiduously industrious.
True, generous feeling is made small account of by some, but here
